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Monday, July 15, 2013

An Airplane Company in World War I Era Boston?

Elmer Walter Wilkinson was a distant cousin of mine. He was born in Groveton, New Hampshire in
1885, the son of Edwin Walter Wilkinson, a local barber who had a shop in
Northumberland, and his wife, Elizabeth Wiles.
Northumberland is in Coos County, north of the notches, in the middle of
the “Great North Woods”. The local
economy was mostly lumber and paper mills. However, this Wilkinson family was able to escape the life tied to lumber and paper in Northern New Hampshire.

Elmer’s older brother, Herbert (1883 – 1968) became a doctor
and was in private practice in nearby Berlin, a large paper mill city. He retired to San Diego, California later in
life. Elmer didn't stay in the North
Woods, either. He was at first a bookkeeper
at a local paper mill, and then his WWI draft registration records him as
living at Killian Street, Boston as a mechanical draftsman at the Sturtevant
Aeroplane Company. By the time he
filled out his draft forms for WWII he was living in the Boston suburb of
Lynnfield, working as a draftsman in Everett.

This first draft card is what made me drop everything and
take my research in a new direction. There
was an airplane company in Boston? I had never heard of the Sturtevant Company,
and neither had my husband (he’s an aeronautical engineer). Of
course, a few Google searches led to some terrific industrial history on line. A little more poking around also led me to
find the Massachusetts Aviation Historical Society, which gave me a terrific
idea. I live near the New Hampshire
Aviation Museum, which is in Londonderry, along the runway at the Manchester
airport. I made a quick phone call up
there and a very talkative volunteer filled me in on more than I ever needed to
know about the Sturtevant Aeroplane Company.

A Sturtevant Model A3

The first American built plane for air combat

From a family record to Google to a historical society to an actual
aviation buff who filled me in on lots of historical detail. This is exactly how much of my genealogy
research goes. After learning about a
family member, I usually do a quick internet search, followed by a visit to a
historical society or archive, and then a talk with a local expert. Does your research follow this pattern, too? Either way, finding out more about where Elmer Wilkinson worked made his life come alive for me.

Sturtevant Industrial History (in a nutshell)

Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant was born in the small town of
Norridgewock, Maine in 1833, and started life as a shoemaker. He designed a machine to peg shoes and came
to Boston in 1856 to find funding to start manufacturing his invention. He was tricked into losing his design but went
into manufacturing wooden pegs for shoes.
He found that the machines that cut the pegs produced a lot of dust, and
invented an exhaust fan which improved his work environment. He became the “Father
of the American Fan Industry”, and built the first commercial blowers in 1864. B. F. Sturtevant was another country boy from the New England North Woods who escaped the drudgery of a menial job and made a better life for himself.

The Sturtevant Fan company made its fame manufacturing fans
for all types of industrial applications before the turn of the 20th
century. He was the first to figure out
how to ventilate naval ships. He diversified into heaters, engines, drying
machines, vacuums and other systems. When the BF Sturtevant Company arrived in Hyde
Park it was the largest fan manufacturer in the world. By World War I they were
building aeronautical engines and had expanded into Canada and other
states. During World War II they reached
their height, and in 1945 they were bought by Westinghouse. By 1989 the Hyde Park location closed, after
130 years of history.

Early advertisement for Sturtevant fans

The one surviving building of the large Sturtevant complex in Hyde Park is now an artist's loft residence at 1 Westinghouse Plaza, Hyde Park, Boston. The Lofts include residences and 12 studio art spaces.

2 comments:

Lovely. Someone had to be the Father of the American Fan Industry, and it's a distant cousin of yours!

Since I live so far from the area of my research, I do Internet and then Interlibrary Loan and then call historical societies in the area if/when I can. Next week I'm looking at two books in the University of SC library that I couldn't even get in Interlibrary Loan!

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About Me

Author of the Nutfield Genealogy blog and occasional genealogy speaker. My family research includes Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, with a smattering of Nova Scotia. Please contact me if you see your ancestors on this blog. I would love to share information. I am the former secretary of the New Hampshire Mayflower Society, former President of the Londonderry Historical Society, member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Mass. Society of Genealogists, The National Genealogical Society, and the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists.